I Meet People

As I mentioned in the last post, meeting people is not one of my favorite things. I don't socialize very well and try to avoid socializing situations because I will replay moments where I believe I've done something embarrassing forever and ever in my head afterwards. Kind of a self-torture in a way. As I look on this now, a lot of those moments probably didn't matter to anyone else anyway and honestly, I was being kind of stupid. 

Anyway, I also said in the last post that working at Giant has helped grow my socializing skills. I wanted to expand on this, hence this post. I used to be very afraid to even say hello to strangers, make eye contact, or even smile. Now as a cashier, this is sort of required, and I quickly realized within the first 5 minutes of my first shift that I was going to have to get used to talking to people. I thought this would take me a while to get over, but in fact, it only took a couple of months. 

Now, putting aside the fact that every time I go into Giant I feel this adrenaline and a strong urge to smile and say hi to every stranger I see, I am now not afraid to talk to people anymore. I still haven't gotten over my fear of guys...That one has always been harder, and hopefully it will change at college. But I've changed, and my personality has changed a little for the better. (I think)

I Want My Little Box Back

I feel like I have less and less time to myself these days. I do things with my church at least three o nights a week, and during the day I have schoolwork and other classes. It's starting to wear me down, even to the point to desperation. Last Sunday, it started to snow after morning service, and I started praying for the cancellations of all the evening activities. Apparently God heard me (I know he always does) and a half an hour before I had to leave to worship band practice I got my wish. I literally jumped for joy. I did not want to go anywhere.

I thought the feeling would go away after having a night off, but it didn't. I felt the same way and continue to feel the same way now. I don't want to do anything, go anywhere, I just want to curl up in my room and do my things all by myself. It's really frustrating considering the rest of my family gets really excited about certain events and I am just not really feeling it.

I think perhaps I am doing too many things at the same time. I have taken too much on and now I'm breaking under all the pressure. This is not good, and adding a job next semester will probably not make my life any easier. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really just being immature about wanting "free time", but it is a part of who I am as a person. It's the way God made me. However, I need to stop making it the focus of every day. For example, I've found my self counting down the hours until seven o'clock, which is normally when I can be by myself (for the most part) and being extremely annoyed by everything happening around me.

It does not help that my sisters are really loud at home. They seem to have to be continually cracking jokes and goofing off at one volume level: extra loud. Loudness has always made me feel very confined and anxious. It think its probably my OCD for the most part, but it's also part of my personality. I like things to be calm and contained and moderate, which appears to be the opposite of everyone else in my family. Except maybe my mom. The biggest problem about this is that they don't stop when I ask them, even when I've told them why it bothers me. I think they probably think I'm making it up and just don't want them to have fun, but that isn't true. I just want them to be a little quieter while doing it. Ok, a lot quieter.

Anyway this is mainly what I'm really struggling with right now. I just want to be alone and have everyone leave me alone in my little box. Hopefully I'll find some way to deal with it, but for right now I'm just going to be praying.